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WRITING AS A SACRED PRACTICE a workshop with Michael Murphy MA
As a child Michael lived with his grandparents on the banks of the Seneca River in upstate New York. His grandfather placed a high value on his Iroquois heritage and taught Michael an appreciation for the cycles of nature, and his connection to the earth. During college Michael became interested in eastern spirituality and took time off to study meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the Swiss Alps. Returning, he taught meditation and endeavored to integrate eastern spirituality with his study of English Literature at SUNY, Geneseo. After graduation, Michael spent a decade and a half in grittier jobs such as caring for mental patients, typewriter repair, and carpentry. This period of creative starvation culminated in an impromptu vision quest on a hilltop in California where he clearly saw his life's work as involving writing. In 1992 he entered the Master's in Professional Writing Program at Maharishi International University. Upon graduation he was invited to join the faculty there and taught writing and multimedia authoring for nine years. During his last year there, he got up at 5 AM each morning to write his recently published book Murphy's Laws of the Inner Life. It is a memoir of his eclectic spiritual path in which he extracts aphorisms from his various experiences. Since leaving Maharishi University, Michael has studied Inkan shamanic healing with The Four Winds Society in Peru and the US.
Michael draws upon all of the above in his workshops. The main thrust is for the participant to learn how to "ReVision" his or her life on a deeper level of truth by writing about it. He employs exercises based on both the Native American and Vedic spiritual traditions. He also teaches a technique which he developed while writing Murphy's Laws of the Inner Life which turned out to be a key spiritual experience for him. "There are two tricks to this process. One is a technique which helps the writer to probe the deepest truth of any life experience. Before we can do that, however, it is necessary to break free from personally and culturally conditioned ways of looking at our lives. I accomplish this by taking students through multi-sensory writing exercises based on non-Euro-American cultural paradigms. The cultural archetypes of India and Native America are less alienated from nature and are able to help us reveal deeper truths about who we are. My seminar is like a vision quest with pen and paper." Participant comments: "Your workshop Saturday was so rich and fertile. I was quite amazed at the depth in both exercises. Each one has continued to yield new insights, and I'm writing at a much more primal level." —D.C., Iowa "It was very powerful in shifting my attention from the merely intellectual to a more visceral connection with life, myself, and my writing." —S.H., Iowa "It was a rich multi-sensory experience, from the setup of the room to the exercises." —Brianna Delott, Iowa "It reinforced my desire to tell stories about integrating and harmonizing the physical and spiritual." —Patrick Bosold, Iowa The writing exercises include:
For information on taking or sponsoring this seminar in your locality, e-mail michael@dawnhawk.com or call Michael at 641-472-2598 |
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Contact Information Telephone E-mail michael@dawnhawk.com |
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